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Are Chemicals Disrupting Our Hormones?

With health concerns like obesity, cancer, and diabetes on the rise and declining sperm counts and fertility rates, scientists are starting to take a hard look at the environmental factors that may be contributing to these issues. One theory is that otherwise “safe” chemicals are disrupting our endocrine systems – impacting normal functions regulated by hormones, including reproduction, metabolism, puberty, and more.

While humans are exposed to hundreds of chemicals each day, studying the long-term effects of these chemicals poses a unique challenge for researchers. Laboratory studies have demonstrated effects of industrial chemicals on mice and rats, and examples of endocrine disruption in wildlife has been traced back to chemicals in the environment – but conclusive evidence has yet to be presented showing these impacts on human populations.

“We can’t test in humans directly,” said Associate Professor Frederic Leusch, an environmental toxicologist from Griffith University. “That would be absolutely unethical, to expose someone to the chemical and go, ‘how are you doing today? How about tomorrow?’”

While Leusch said the body is quite resilient, equipped with an effective system to repair and recover from foreign intruders. An endocrinologist with the University of Texas Dr. Andrea Gore said it’s important to look at the timing of our exposure to these potentially disruptive chemicals.

“Classical toxicology has always followed the mantra of the dose makes the poison – a higher dose will be worse than a lower dose, and there is a lower limit of exposure where there would be no effect,” she said.

According to Gore, the “classic toxicology” approach taken by countries like Australia ignores the fact that even low levels of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals could bring long-term effects – especially if this exposure occurs during times when humans are particularly sensitive to hormones, like in the womb or during puberty.

“You can take a very low level of a chemical that disrupts a hormone and if you expose it during a developmental time of life when your body might not normally be exposed to a natural hormone at all, the body can respond to that low dose,” Gore said.

Still, this is hard to prove, or even test, in humans. According to Leusch, there is enough questionable evidence to encourage us to limit our exposure to these potentially disruptive chemicals.

“Until we can figure out what the safe concentration is, where the threshold is, I think we should aim to get exposed to as little as possible,” said Leusch.

Consumers do have some options to limit this exposure. Gore recommends washing fruits and vegetables before eating them, to eliminate any residue from pesticides – which could be disruptive to the endocrine system. She also encourages people to choose fresh food over processed alternatives.

“No matter how pristine processed organic spinach might be, we don’t know what chemicals it came into contact with while being processed,” she said.

You can also avoid microwaving plastic containers, which could cause bisphenols like BPA to leach into your food. Personal care products might also contain potentially disruptive chemicals, so check ingredient listings for parabens or phthalates. These chemicals can also be found in cleaning products.

With nearly 100,000 manufactured chemicals in the world today, Leusch admitted not all of them have been tested – and worries we may find out too late that some of these chemicals are toxic. By working with environmental health scientists, biologists, and endocrinologists, chemists could begin developing chemicals that won’t impact our hormones.

“If you want to understand and design a safe chemical that doesn’t interfere with hormones, you actually need to know what a hormone is and how it acts to test it,” said Gore.

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